TALKING TECHNICALS: Palladium bubble bursts
As platinum rises, it seems some substitution is starting to occur
The prices of platinum and palladium have diverged considerably over recent years. Platinum peaked at $2,200 in 2008 and dropped to below $800 recently. Palladium bottomed out in 2008 at about $160 and has recently reached a peak of $1,540. The price of palladium has surged over the past eight months. In August 2018, it was near $800 an ounce. The near doubling of the price since then has grabbed headlines. But the noise is often the loudest at the extremes, and the hype over palladium when it was around $1,500 was no exception. That was what drove some to suggest that palladium was a bubble waiting to pop. The most notable of these was Anglo American CEO Mark Cutifani, who made a passing remark in mid-March that palladium was an unsustainable bubble. When the CEO of a mining house that produces the stuff suggests it is a bubble, it’s worth listening and it seems the market did exactly that.
The words were barely out of Cutifani’s mouth when the palladium price plunged more th...
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